𝖘𝖎𝖑𝖛𝖊𝖗 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖎𝖓𝖘: 𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖙𝖍𝖗𝖊𝖊
cw: fem!reader, this chapter contains themes of deadly illness, forced marriage, forced labor/domestic servitude, and child abuse. sorry this took me so long
chapter three: in which we return to Hell. ✩ 2.5k words
Age 14
Sirius’ body trembles, his muscles aching as they flex and tense involuntarily. His eyes are dry, his tears having run out despite the persistence of his silent sobs. His nose is full, a dull ache throbbing in his sinuses that gives him anything but peace. He can still hear the echo of his mother’s screams, the sharp sting of her hands coming into contact with his skin.
‘Stupid boy!’ Each word Walburga Black screeched felt like a claw, piercing through his skin with ease and leaving everlasting, catastrophic damage. ‘How dare you disrespect me! I am your mother!’
“Sirius?” Reggie’s voice cuts through Sirius’ memory, and he blinks himself back into reality.
Sirius wipes at his face, trying to get rid of any evidence he’d been crying. Reggie sits on the top step, his hands curled up into fists and tucked beneath his chin, elbows on his knees. Sirius stands, clearing his throat.
“What do you want, Reg?”
“If you want to keep something from mom and dad, I know where you can hide it.”
Sirius reels like he’s been slapped, taken aback as he narrows his stare on his little brother. His little brother who he was certain was a perfect angel and never did anything wrong.
“What?”
Reggie stands, rolling his eyes as he gestures for Sirius to follow him. He does, but not without argument.
“You have a place for hiding things from mom and dad?”
“Yes, and it’s clearly better than yours.” Reggie closes his bedroom door behind the two of them, though their parents seem wrapped up in a meeting and likely won’t even see their children until the following morning.
Reggie slides open the bottom drawer of his dresser. It’s filled with loose scarves and other things he hardly ever wears other than under the guidance of his mother. He sets the drawer aside, reaching into the empty space, and presses against the base of the dresser. His fingers slide to one of the corners, and peel it back.
Sirius doesn’t know what he expected from his brother. Joints? Dirty magazines? Condoms? That’s what he would have.
Not papers. Not books. Like Reggie has been hiding away their lesson materials in the bottom of his dresser since he started school. Why would he waste such a perfect spot like this for fucking papers?
“You can hide stuff here.” Reggie tells him. Sirius gives him a half-focused nod and watches as he replaces the drawer.
Sirius never hid anything in Reggie’s drawer.
He never went back to read any of the papers, either. He’ll regret that forever.
The steps up to 12 Grimmauld Place don’t get any easier no matter how many times Sirius has to force his legs to follow the same path. His hand tightens its grip around his wife’s hand, your hand, tugging you along beside him as the two of you approach his parents’ house together for the first time since the “wedding.”
The dress you’re in is making you uncomfortable. Not because it doesn’t fit, or because of the fabric. Sirius has given you a small wardrobe full of perfectly tailored clothing. It’s uncomfortable because you’ve never worn clothes made for you, or clothes this expensive. You feel… unworthy of it, so it clings to your frame like a bad omen. Sirius thinks you look beautiful, but he doesn’t think telling you that will make either of you feel better.
Sirius is wearing a suit. A nicer one than he’d donned during his last visit to the Manor, during his wedding. He needs to make a good impression, he needs his parents to think he’s caved to their demands. He needs answers, and the only way to get any is through them. So, even though the idea makes him sick, he’ll swallow his disgust and pretend to be the perfect son.
For Reggie.
Approaching the front door feels like approaching the Gates of Hell. His mother, the Devil, surely waits with a faux smile on her lips on the other side, ready to rip him into shreds and set him aflame. The dread settles in his stomach like a weight, and he finds himself squeezing your hand. You don’t squeeze back, but you don’t pull away. It makes him feel a little better as he raises his other hand toward the door knocker.
The ominous thunk, thunk, thunk, that sounds from Sirius’ knock at the door makes you press a bit closer into his side. There’s something ironic about the two of you feeling more comfortable around each other now that you’re united against a common enemy. Though, really, you aren’t necessarily antagonistic against Sirius’ family, just more weary and unsure of them than him.
“It’s going to be fine,” Sirius leans down to whisper in your ear, a piece of his long, dark hair brushing against your shoulder when he does. You fight the urge to shiver, keeping your eyes focused ahead on the door, waiting for Sirius’ family’s butler to open it. When the butler does finally open the door, he looks just as angry and disgusted as he did last time.
“Kreacher,” Said butler’s nose scrunches up even more at Sirius’ greeting, practically a snarl at this point.
“Ugh, you again.” He shuffles out of the way, grumbling to himself. The butler barely spares you a glance as he turns around, and waves the two of you toward the sitting room. He heads into the kitchen, shaking his head.
Sirius gives the both of you another moment to compose yourself before he squeezes your hand again and pulls you inside.
It’s even worse than Sirius had imagined. He’d resigned himself into playing the role of the perfect heir, if only for long enough to find out information about Reggie, but what he didn’t expect is the massive decline his parents have taken only within the last few weeks.
“Our lawyer suggested we name an heir as Head of Household,” His mother had said. Sirius hadn’t asked why, but the answer is evident now as the two of you sit across from his parents. They’re ill. With what illness, Sirius doesn’t know, and he doubts either of them would tell him the truth if he asked.
His father is barely coherent. The wrinkles on his face have deepened in a way that ages him far beyond his years, his hands shake violently with every movement, and his eyes seem to have a hard time focusing. Sirius even catches him murmuring to himself, lips barely moving, but Sirius isn’t able to hear it.
His mother is more coherent than his father, but she talks. And talks. And talks. About anything and everything all at once, words strung together with barely a breath. Sirius is able to understand most of what his mother is saying but she flutters from topic to topic mid-sentence. Her eyes bounce between you and Sirius, back and forth, like she’s watching a tennis match. Her hands shake every time she lifts her cup to her lips, and it isn’t long until the china shatters when she misses the small saucer. Sirius feels his heart stop, and you practically jump out of your skin.
“Oh, no!” His mother’s face morphs into one of frustration and she stands, calling out for Kreacher. The butler shuffles into the room, his feet lagging and the scowl on his mouth showing his anger at being forced to do his job. Walburga stands, knees quaking and creaking with every shift and slight movement of her body. Kreacher grumbles to himself as he begins to clean up the shattered china. Orion just sits there, eyes unblinking, staring through instead of at, the slight rise and fall of his chest his only sign of life.
Walburga clears her throat, heavy jewelry weighing down her hands as she brushes them over her dress, smoothing the fabric. “Pardon me,” Her voice is hollower and shakier than it was a few moments ago. “I shall return. I just need to… freshen up.”
The tension in the room grips tighter with every clack of her heels until the door is slamming closed behind her. Kreacher lets out a low curse, following behind her with the remnants of the teacup wrapped in a napkin in his gloved hand.
There is only silence for a moment, the kind that echoes and feels fuzzy in your ears. Sirius turns to you, eyes frantic, and reaches for your hand. Your instincts tell you to pull away but his fingers squeeze around your wrist, holding it firmly in his grip.
“Listen, I need you to do something,” Sirius’ instructions come out in a low, hissed whisper, his head tilting toward yours to hide his lips from the far-off gaze of his father. Since he is still in the dark about Orion’s illness, he doesn’t want to take any risks of his mother finding out about this. Your lips purse in uncertainty but the look on his face has you pausing, listening. “I need you to go upstairs, to the third room on the left. There’s a desk in there. The bottom drawer of that desk comes out, and underneath it, there should be some papers. I need you to bring those back to me, but hide them. Okay?”
The instructions swirl in your brain, threatening to get jumbled up, but you nod anyway. You leave through the opposite door that Sirius’ mother had, tiptoeing your way through the house. The stairs take the longest, each step a great risk when the old wooden beams could creak at any moment, calling attention to you.
You let out a breath of relief when you finally reach the landing, feeling like you’ve won a small victory. Finding the third door on the left feels like another, and the tension in your shoulders eases the smallest bit. You know better than to let your guard down, though.
The door opens to a bedroom, and closes behind you with a soft ‘click’. You’d been expecting an office, but your expectations don’t make a difference when you spot the desk. You barely glance around the rest of the room. It looks… undisturbed. Untouched in a way that makes you think it’s been empty for quite some time despite the furniture. There are no decorations, no hints of personality or touches of the life of the person who slept here. It’s just… cold.
The drawer slips out of the desk with an ease you aren’t expecting, your breath catching at the ‘thunk’ that seems to echo around you as the wooden bars come unhinged from their notches. You spend at least thirty seconds trying to silently place the drawer on the floor, holding your breath and steadying your hands to avoid making any more noise. The last thing you want is for someone to catch you up here.
You find the papers rather quickly, fingers grasping at the parchment and removing them all from their hiding place. There’s at least a dozen, most covered in a swirly, elegant writing, ink cracked and paper crinkled and folded. Some, instead, have a scratchy, rougher writing, but were discarded seemingly just as hastily, the corners torn. Your heart pounds as you work to flatten them out, breathing shaky as your eyes begin to trace over the lettering.
It’s… horrible. Random pages seemingly torn off or out of longer letters, short snippets of information that lack a beginning or an end. Discussion of private schools, of Family Names and businesses, but also of arranged marriage, words that make your own skin crawl and the silver ring on your finger to burn like a hot fire. It doesn’t take long for your gaze to find a familiar name amongst the rest of the horrific words, either.
Tom Riddle.
Even seeing it in writing has you trembling, flashes of pain and fear from the last several years tearing through your mind. Your fingers put more wrinkles into the paper as your grip tightens, your eyes continue to follow the words, to read the truth, to see a reflection of your own experience hidden away in a drawer.
‘unfortunately, the deal cannot go through in the absence of the older boy.’ The elegant loops do nothing to aid in the horror of the words they create. ‘our searches for sirius have been useless, i fear we are no closer to finding him than we were before. i wish it weren’t so, but i fear we do not have a choice, not with the older one gone. tom riddle will come for regulus, now.’
You can feel the tell-tale burn of bile rising in your throat, and you force yourself to swallow it down as you shove the papers back into the drawer. Your ears ring as you replace everything exactly as you found it. Endless thoughts and questions run through your mind but more than anything, you feel a sense of despair.
Had you been taken just like Sirius’ brother seems to have been? Has Regulus been forced into years of work and a marriage he doesn’t want, just like you?
Walburga is back by the time you return to Sirius’ side. He can barely keep his eyes off of you as you sit stiff as a board next to him. His mother, as if only realizing your absence upon your return, offers you a small look of suspicion.
Their conversation continues, though you don’t hear most of it. You can tell from the tone in Sirius’ voice that he isn’t getting the answers he’d hoped for, anger and frustration toying with each word he speaks. His mother continues to speak, speaking over him, speaking over herself, too. His father sits there, silent and staring hollowly. Your mind stays preoccupied, recounting words in elegant scribbling and horrific memories that force themselves to the surface.
You barely manage a smile and a goodbye as Sirius ushers you out. The look on his face is dark, but he tugs you along with an urgency that suggests he wants to talk. You let him pull you out the door, a tough silence enveloping the two of you as you climb into the car.
“Well?” Sirius’ voice cuts through the quiet as the car engine starts, and you avoid looking at him, your eyes instead moving to stare out the window. You don’t know what to tell him. You can’t even admit some of Tom Riddle’s horrors to yourself and you experienced them. If his parents made a deal with Tom Riddle…
No, you can’t go back there. You don’t want to think of that place, of the things you did and saw there. The cruelty, the evil.
So, when you clear your throat, the words slip out of you before you can even fully decide what you want to say, your instincts making the decision for you.
“Nothing.” You find yourself telling him, eyes meeting his own finally.
“I didn’t find anything. It was empty.”
© prettydaisygirl
dividers by @bernardsbendystraws
